Postgraduate Course: Climate Law Formation: Movement Building, Lawmakers, and Equity (LAWS11465)
Course Outline
| School | School of Law |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course addresses the process of climate law formation by interactions between movement-building, the private sector, and government law-writing, with a particular focus on equity and just transition concepts affecting the formation of law. The course considers how litigation is one tool among many involved in the formation of climate law. It investigates the political and organizing forces that create the law, and the way lawyers (including students) might work with them. It starts with the interactions between litigation, legislation, and political negotiation and then builds to more specific climate law examples. The course is intended to be complementary to Climate Change Litigation: Practice and Theory (LAWS11421). |
| Course description |
Provisional seminar outline:
Week 1: Movements and law formation: theory and history;
Week 2: Environmental aw formation: US statutory and regulatory examples;
Week 3: Climate law formation overview: movements and examples;
Week 4: Climate Law and equity: redlining, environmental justice, and just transitions;
Week 5: Negotiated aw formation: rulemaking and legislative processes;
Week 6: Strategic litigation for movement-building: public trust and common law cases;
Week 7: Litigation as Corporate Accountability and Source of Commercial Law ¿ fraud and disclosure cases and resulting law;
Week 8: Climate market law and movements: pro and con;
Week 9: Sub-nationals and law formation;
Week 10: Summation.
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Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Critically discuss the emergence and development of key sources of climate law;
- Understand and evaluate the main processes of climate law formation through interactions between movement-building, the private sector, and government, and the development of legal rules utilised in climate action;
- Identify key gaps and weaknesses of the processes of climate law formation and critically discuss options for reform.
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Reading List
Indicative Bibliography:
Ann Carlson, The Clean Air Act¿s Blind Spot, 65 UCLA L. Rev. 1036 (2018)
Clean Power Plan, 80 Fed. Reg. 64,661 (2015)
Connecticut v. American Electric Power, 564 U.S. 410 (2011)
Jody Freeman, The Obama Administration¿s National Auto Policy: Lessons from the ¿Car Deal¿, 25 Harvard Environmental Law Review 344 (2011)
Selections from John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust: A Theory of Judicial Review, Harvard University Press (1980)
Selections from All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, Penguin Random House (2020)
Elena Kagan, Presidential Administration, 114 Harv. L. Rev. 2245 (2001)
Friends of the Irish Environment v. The Government of Ireland, Supreme Court of Ireland (2020)
Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007)
Jedediah Purdy, The Long Environmental Justice Movement, 44 Ecology Law Quarterly 809 (2018)
Juliana v. United States, U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (2020)
Selections from Gerald Rosenberg, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change? University of Chicago Press (2008)
Urgenda Foundation v. The State of the Netherlands, Supreme Court of the Netherlands (2020)
Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U.S. 302 (2014) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Knowledge and understanding
- Critically discuss the emergence and development of key sources of climate law;
- Understand and evaluate the main processes of climate law formation through interactions between movement-building, the private sector, and government, and the development of legal rules utilised in climate action;
- Identify key gaps and weaknesses of the processes of climate law formation and critically discuss options for reform.
Skills and Abilities in Research and Enquiry
- Find and contextualise key materials relating to climate law formation;
- Critically evaluate the relevant legal documents, including regulations, statutes, and judgments of domestic courts and tribunals;
- Explain key concepts relating to climate law;
- Participate in debates about the effectiveness and challenges of climate law.
- Graduate Attributes: Skills and abilities in Personal and Intellectual Autonomy
- Work by themselves in order to complete assignments;
- Manage their time in order to complete assignments within set deadlines.
Skills and Abilities in Communication
- Communicate fluently the nature of legal processes pertinent to climate law formation.
Skills and Abilities in Personal Effectiveness
- Present legal arguments coherently and with authority.
Technical/practical Skills
- Write wiki posts and essays, using appropriate conventions of academic writing. |
| Keywords | Climate Change,LLM,Level 11,Postgraduate,Global Environment,Law |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Mr Craig Segall
Tel:
Email: v1csegal@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Chloe Culross
Tel:
Email: Chloe.Culross@ed.ac.uk |
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